Posts Tagged ‘weary ramblings’

[Editor's note: Struggling to pick colors in ArcMap or need to ensure your design meets federal accessibility standards for vision impairment? ColorBrewer.org has been updated to version 2.0 and now a ArcMap plugin brings some functionality right into your GIS. It's not clear to me if the "Terrain overlay" option for previewing the colors takes into account the muted nature / secondary HSV mixing of the colors, I don't recommend using that part just yet.]

ColorTool is a plugin for ArcMap™ (part of the ESRI ArcGIS Desktop suite) that helps users create choropleth maps using ColorBrewer color ramps.

The program runs from a button in the toolbar and opens a form that guides the user in choosing a classification scheme. For more information on the color options, visit ColorBrewer.org. ColorTool supports Quantile, Equal Interval, Natural Breaks (Jenks), and Unique Value classification types.

ColorBrewer is an online Flash app designed to help select appropriate data coloring schemes for maps, including sequential (choropleths), diverging (data with break points), and qualitative (discrete categorical data). I’ve covered version 1.0 before, and now ColorBrewer 2.0 is out. Not a huge number of functional differences, but some useful additions (and one disappointing subtraction):

More parameters are selected by drop-down boxes instead of buttons; bit faster this way

All controls are on the left side, making them easier to find

You can now choose between a colored background and a terrain background

Color transparency can now be set between 0 and 100%

More choices for background, road, city and border colors

You can now screen color schemes by appropriateness for color blindness, photocopying and print. In version 1.0, you only had icons showing which uses were appropriate, and these are still available in the “Score Card” tab at lower right

More options for color scheme export directly from the program, including an Excel file of all available color schemes, export in Adobe Swatch Exchange format (ASE), and in-program text hex color codes for copying and pasting into graphics programs.